


Clarity [ESU]

by WritingByEboniO (EboniOrchid)



Series: Evil!Sammy Universe [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Angst, Apocalypse, BDSM, Blood, Bottom Dean, Breathplay, Character Study, Cock & Ball Torture, Dark, Dominant/Top Sam, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Evil Sam Winchester, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Master/Slave, Needles, Oral Sex, Original Character(s), Plot, Rough Body Play, Rough Sex, Service, Service Submission, Sex Toys, Sexual Slavery, Slash, Slave Dean, Smut, Submissive/Bottom Dean, Top Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-16 21:29:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/866811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EboniOrchid/pseuds/WritingByEboniO
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean thought that his captivity and use were punishment for something Sam wouldn't name, but now ... is it punishment or is it sacrifice?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clarity [ESU]

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I own nothing. Really. Nothing. Well, except the OCs. Also? Please do not use this as a kink instruction manual!
> 
>  **Soundtrack:** Imagine Dragons' "Bleeding Out" ([audio + lyrics](http://www.lyricsboy.com/i/imagine-dragons/imagine-dragons-bleeding-out-lyrics-video/%0A)).
> 
>  **Author's Notes:** This story stands alone, but acts as a good (re-)entry point for the 'verse.  It also serves as a prologue for the upcoming "Going Down."  More ESU on the way!  //  For more info about my [Evil!Sammy Universe](http://writingbyebonio.livejournal.com/7233.html), including links to all installments, please [go here](http://writingbyebonio.livejournal.com/7233.html). [Will eventually be mirrored on/revised for AO3.]  
> 

__

Shut the door.  
Crack it open.  
Swing it wide.  
Keep both eyes open.

 

CLOSED  


> Sam's smile froze him, like a smear of iced grit sanding its way down his skin.  "Every day, Dean. Every day and for hours. To help me focus, keep me in line, speed up my progress. Pain. Exhaustion. Hunger. Thirst. Cold. And more plain-old pain. Every. Day."  Sam wielded his words like swords, like he knew they would cut through Dean's every layer of defense. 
> 
> Dean held Sam's gaze for a long moment, but eventually shuddered and turned away from the truth he saw stamped there, engraved like hundreds of wall-carved lines to count every day he hadn't come.  It meant his "god, Sam" was an involuntary exhale, not for the man behind him so much as the brother he'd left in their hands.
> 
> "Shut up."
> 
> He couldn't help the words spilling out of him, even though he knew they wouldn't change anything. "I'm sorry.  I- ..."  Turning back to see those steel-hard eyes, he knew both how little his words mattered and how much he _had_ to say them now or never have them said at all.  "You have to know I tried-..."
> 
> "Shut. Up."
> 
> He could feel the heat radiating off of his brother, but couldn't stop himself from drowning in apologies, stepping closer and willing Sam to see sense, to see _him_ , and to know he would've been there if he'd understood, if he'd found a way.  "I should have been there.  I know that, okay?  I wouldn't've- ..."
> 
> "But you weren't, Dean. You. ... Weren't."
> 
> For a moment, Dean could see the reflection of a scared and angry broken boy, shining up at him through stranger's eyes. "God, I'm so sorry, Sammy." His baby brother was still in there somewhere, buried alive under pain and darkness, and all because Dean hadn't been there, late or early.  He had just never come for him at all.

  
The sound of the door slamming echoed in Dean's head along with Sam's words and the imprint of Sam's hand on his chest, shoving him away.  He tried to right himself, but couldn't connect mind to legs for long and fell to the floor, winded like he'd just run fifty miles for his life.  Really, he'd been running for weeks now, maybe months - the days never quite seemed to add up - but most of his fuel had been anger.  Now, that anger had turned into fumes.  How many miles did he have left?

His eyes closed without him asking them to.  He was just ... so exhausted.  Dean knew he should get to the bed or the couch at least, but he couldn't drag himself up anywhere.  When he looked over at the four-post structure with layers of soft sheets and a thick comforter, his eyes slid away, like when he looked at the door, a condition they couldn't be coaxed back from.   _He_ was Sam's problem.  Did he deserve any of the good without the worst here?  His stomach rolled and he bent like that might hold it together, like that might hold _him_ together.

He felt the sun crawl across the sky from there, the windows on his left barely warming him as the light from beyond the bed cast shadows in his direction, longer and longer.  Chills and cramps set in, his body straining to shift his legs, once and then again, and in the low light of sunset he picked his gaze up from the floor and allowed himself to watch the door.  Evening became a dark night and still no one came - not Sam, not any of the servants, and not even a guard.  No one brought him food, no one locked him into the cuffs hanging on the bed.  No one ... came.

Sleep pulled at his eyelids, like the dryness of his tongue pulled at his throat, but he didn't get up, didn't move to the bed, didn't go to the door.  His stomach eventually protested and he forced himself up and into the bathroom, but it all felt wrong.  Where was Sam?  _He should be home._  It wasn't safe out there, was it?  Sam had almost always been home during the night.  He had to- ... Dean stopped that thought as he leaned a shoulder on the wall by the bathroom, studying the door again.  They were still in an inn, right?  Sam didn't have to do anything.  Sam could probably just sleep somewhere else.   _Sam doesn't even have to see you.  Not now and not ever again._  

This room had always been a cell.  He'd never been confused about that.  He hadn't left it in ... six weeks?  Seven?  He wasn't even sure.  No Thursday B-Movie nights or Sunday marathons, no weekday happy hours, no twelve-week checkups for his car.  No Christmas, no New Year's.  He had _no clue_ what day or date it was and outside his window the fall season had turned to fire and then to ruins and snow.  If Sam wasn't coming back, though, and no one else came in either, how long would it take, even in his premium hotel-style accommodations, for him to drop the 'stir' but double the 'crazy', for hunger to overwhelm him?

"They didn't give you digs like this, did they?"  Looking around the room, arms crossed over his chest, Dean knew that tracing these plush lines back to the story from which Sam had only let him see a sliver would be impossible.  The way Sam had said other slaves lived drew up images of cages in basements, scraps to eat, a tin of water like a dog, and that couldn't have been how the Fallen had treated their soldiers, but even as Dean thought that, it wasn't hard to imagine something as bad or worse.  They had to be broken down, didn't they?  Rebuilt?

"Pain brings clarity."  Sam had said it and even if Dean hadn't heard the rest of the story, he could've understood it if he'd tried.  Given enough pain, maybe he couldn't think straight, but he could usually follow instructions, could repeat things again and again until they set in his muscles and bones and became a part of him, even if he didn't want them to be. Even if he wanted to stop cycling through acts that made it hard to look anyone in the eye and touches that made his insides shiver, he couldn't say no, couldn't halt or even pause.  His brother, who had never been one to lash out physically in anger unless something - and not some _one_ \- deserved to be dead, had learned to share the lesson he'd endured.

Dean slept on the floor that night, at the foot of the bed, watching the door, with no pillow, no blanket, and no attempt at comfort.   _Maybe I don't understand, Sam, but ... I heard you, okay?_  He'd gotten the pain.  He was working on the clarity.

**********

CRACKED

Dean woke up aching, the rising sun stealing his eyesight between long blinks, and the knot quaking silently in his stomach came with a mix of hope and terror.  He climbed his way up to standing with the help of the footboard and looked up at the bed, but there was no one in it.  There was no one in the bed and the bathroom remained dark and open.  Nothing had changed but the sun and the moon.  Looking back at the door, it was a calculated risk, but, for Sam, he would take it anyway.

He knocked.

Someone nudged the door open.  "You ready for breakfast?"  It was the neutral business-like tone of Nowell, the guard Dean most trusted not to stray from whatever protocol Sam had set for them, and Dean's abdomen unclenched, a half inch closer to his everyday levels of internal tension.

"No."  He hadn't even been thinking about food.  "I just wanted to know if- ..."  He stopped short of revealing any of Sam's personal business, even to Nowell.  "Is Sam working today?"  It would imply that Sam had probably slept and was well enough to go out again.

"Commander Winchester is where he is required to be."

To most, maybe it would seem like a short or evasive answer, but Dean had seen how carefully Nowell stayed within the lines here and he had every reason to believe it was for good reason, even if that reason was rather like his own.  So Sam was not wherever he usually worked and someone higher up on the food chain had made that happen.   _Damnit, Sam._  Had he done something?  Reacted badly to what happened yesterday and gone off the rails out there?  Was he being brought back in line?   _Jeezus._

He actively slowed his breath for a moment before opening his mouth again, but then the door was being shoved wider by a skinny shoulder attached to a blond-fringed head.  "Aww, poor little whore, home all alone."  Rick's Grinch-wide leer came into view and Dean felt his bottom teeth slide right and then left against the edges of the top ones.  "First time the Big Man spent the night away, isn't it?  We could keep you company, you know."

"Rick ..."  Nowell didn't need more than one word to make a warning.

"Just sayin'. Boy looks like he could use some warming up."  Rick made a point of letting his gaze stroll down Dean's nude body and then back up again, meeting Dean's eyes.

Every inch of that gaze made Dean's skin want to slink away, but he didn't move and didn't look elsewhere, the anger his brother had yanked out from under him reemerging as contempt.  "You wouldn't know what to do with it if you had it."  It didn't matter that Sam wasn't there right then or that this punk had some kind of emo music powers.  There was no way this fucker was going to get under his skin any more than he got in his ass.   _Permission denied._

Rick sneered and lunged at him, but Nowell was there, shoving them apart even as the door swung fully open.  He looked from one to the other and back, making sure they were both under control before he put his hands down, still poised for physical intervention.

Dean kept his eyes on Rick a moment longer, but then ignored him in favor of Nowell who seemed aware of when either of them even twitched.  "I just want to know when I should expect him back.  That's all."

"The High Council can keep him however long they like."  It came from Rick's quirked mouth, though he affected an innocent blink with a parted mouth as Dean met his eyes.  "Can't imagine what _that's_ about."

"What's that supposed to mean?"  Dean's voice was gruff, the spring-tight intensity of his body a challenge.

"Nothing."  Nowell replied, his eyes sharp in a way that shut Rick's opening mouth, even if only for a moment.  "He doesn't know any more than you do."

Dean took that to mean that Nowell might know more, but had no intentions of sharing that with the class.

"I heard they might pull him out of the field for good." Rick was looking at Nowell now, challenging. 

"Hearing it around doesn't make it true."

"Maybe. But what if they did. Do you think … I mean, do you think it'd be open season for the spot or ... ?"

"I think you have too many ifs underneath your question."

"Seriously, though." Rick leaned in conspiratorially, one eyebrow getting lost under his bangs. "Where do you think they'll put him? I mean, the Tier 1 downtown or like … a private buyer, 'cause- …"

"Enough!"

Nowell may not have ever shouted in Dean's presence before, but Dean wasn't startled enough to miss the ambiguity of Rick's last murmurs.  They meant _him_ , right?  Because- ... His brain refused to connect any more dots or even to acknowledge that there might be dots there.

With the only somewhat restrained force of one of the older man's arms, Nowell forced Rick out into the hallway and began to the close the door behind them.  "Go downstairs and request breakfast for the commander's slave.   _Now._ "

Dean couldn't see Rick's face beyond Nowell's heft, but he heard the man spit out "whatever" as his shoes moved down the hallway.  Dean reached for the door on its way to shut, though, stopping short of putting his fingers between it and its frame.  "Wait."

Nowell didn't turn his way, but stopped the movement of the door and straightened formally, like a wooden toy soldier or an English butler on TV, his tone was firm.  "I suggest that you go about your day as usual until he returns.  Breakfast will be up momentarily."  End of discussion.

"Okay."  Dean held tight to the anxiety spiking like lightning down his body.  "Thanks." His mouth, numb like the rest of him wanted to be, seemed to move slowly.  Nowell closed the door.

**********

OPENED

There was food.  He ate.   Free time meant exercise.  He went through all the motions, thinking too hard for the little good it did him.  More food.  He tried to eat.  Chains at his wrists meant he lay down in the bed for hours.  Dinner alone may as well have been a meal of broken, rusty nails.  Time seemed like an old man dragging his whole life in a duffle bag behind him and nothing mattered but the door.

Sitting up in bed well into the night, just staring at the tall rectangular piece of wood on the other side of the room, Dean knew his hope that it would open was probably crazy, that he had no idea what would happen to him when Sam got back.  Right then and for so many hours before then, though, Dean cared less about what happened to him and more what was happening to Sam.

 _Click.  Click._  It was a barely noticeable sound, a lock tumbling and doorknob gears pulling the latch from the doorframe's strike plate.  Even with his eyes dozed shut, Dean could feel the sound as much as hear it, his pulse doubling before he'd even opened his eyes.  "Sam?"

"Didn't hafta waitup …"  Sam's words were mushy as he closed the door and leaned back against it.

"I ... wanted to."  His skin remembered other times he'd said he wanted to, Sam's fingers in his hair forcing him down until he choked, hand-sized bruises on his hips from Sam's marathon nights.  Did his answer mean something different this time?

Sam laughed, hollow and short, his feet wandering forward before his body began to catch up. "Didn't wanna be fucktawake? … Like a piece'a nothin' whore? Huh? … Whore?"

Dean could smell it now, even across what should be too large a distance.  It was a wonder Sam could even stand up.  "Sam- …"

"NO!" Lucidity washed over Sam in a blink and he was towering beside the bed in three strides. "You shut your fucking top hole!  You hear me?!  Don't you think you've done enough?!"

Dean's eyes held his brother's even when it hurt, his hands flexed to straining over the comforter. It wasn't that he'd done enough.  In fact, he _hadn't_ done enough, _hadn't_ saved the boy from becoming this kind of man.  "I'm sorry."

The hand that latched around his throat and squeezed felt like a constricting stone collar, seconds from snapping his neck, but he didn't fight it. He couldn't even fight what came later, the tears that his brother's hands wrung from him, that his brother's body fucked into and out of him, that his brother's hot and hateful words stripped from his skin like sweat turning to steam.  He wasn't sure how much it mattered, though, even to him.  Sam's problem had been _him_ , him fucking up again, him not saving Sam from the pain and desolation of a demon-designed transformation process.  So, really, if Sam needed to rough him over and fuck him the hell up sometimes, well … maybe he deserved it.  Maybe this _was_ the way to help his brother, to let Sam just ... get it all out of his system.  It was the only way he could make it all make sense.

The bruises implied some sort of car crash or near-death experience the morning after their reunion, but Dean didn't get to study the ugly-dark smudges spanning from his chin to his shoulders very long.  Sam was staying home.  Dean didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing and it wasn't like it had never happened, but with the rumors that he shouldn't even have known, it was hard not to try to figure his brother out.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Sam was glaring him down from the couch where he was lounging, a short stack of papers angled in his hand to catch the light from the window as Dean exited the bathroom.

Dean began to shake his head, self-conscious and denying. "Nothing. I just- …"

Sam snapped his fingers and it was like a sonic boom hit the air, though the posts on the bed didn't shake.

It was strange for Dean to realize that his knees had found the floor, that his eyes fell down just as quickly, and that he couldn't help the tremble in his waiting.

"It's been a while since I decorated you, hasn't it?"

"I … don't know what that means."

"You'll beg me for two hundred needles, won't you whore?"

"Why w- …" The logic in Dean's brain snuffed out like his breath, but he blinked and then nodded slowly. The needles had hurt, but … the damage afterwards wasn't- … Maybe he didn't deserve this _inherently_ in the way Sam said he did, but he did deserve _something_.  Even if he needed to stay functional enough to help Sam eventually, there were a hundred things that he could suffer and survive.  "You're right, sir. I'm- … I'm sorry."

They took all day, the needles, but he was good – stayed on his knees like he was told, breathed deep like he was told, and bit a washcloth and his bottom lip like he was told, until there were needles there too, points scraping his chin. He was floating so far away by the time Sam's hand closed around his cock that his body didn't even know to be shocked, nor his mind to be scared. His gasp was all awe when Sam's needles slid, one and then another, a third and then a fourth, into and through the elastic skin around his balls. It was only later, after Sam had fucked his bloodied mouth, when Sam made him come, excruciatingly slow and far too tender, that he understood the beauty and the torture of each needle's pressure against his tightening sac. It meant he blacked-out as he came, shouting his sore throat into silence, and never knew how the rest of the needles came out.

He woke alone in the bed, alone in the room, and went through the motions again for too many nervous days until Sam stumbled in again, made him ache again, whispered things he shouldn't know beside his head.

"Youmakemesssssick. I hate- … I hate- … Why are you still here?"

His heart broke and nothing would ever be duct tape enough. "You- … you said you wanted me to stay." Right then, it felt like the reason more than that he couldn't get away.

Sam bolted up to kneeling over him, eyes shining livid, his vulnerability chased or burned away like the consequences of drink that Dean swore had just been there. "I want you to scream."

Dean shivered, but nodded, his mouth sticky-slow to open. "I know. … I fucked up. … I'm sorry." Of course, it was never enough.

He screamed infinite apologies and surrendered more deeply than he ever had before as his brother fucked him open with what may as well have been a railroad spike. It was another ending that he didn't remember in the morning. All he knew was that he hurt everywhere and was still no closer to true penance, no closer to done.

There was a pattern after that, though, a gentler pattern than there'd been before, like he'd somehow passed a test in a language that he didn't understand. A day at work. A night half-drunk, but somehow not. Fractured mumblings spiced with alcohol about friends – _no, not friends, no friends, one_ – about work – _not play, so good, too good, no good, stop_ – about _needing more_ … of something, or maybe of everything. If Sam's comfort required a whipping boy more than a brother, then Dean would be that, would give him that, but he tried to understand even as he took it all in. He tried and he survived.

"Please, Sam- …"  Sometimes the pain drove him dumb, though, made him forget his mission, his duty, his debt. "I'm- … _Fuck._  Yes, sir."  His world had gone all wrong because he had to know, had to dredge shit up from the bottom of some black lake that had clearly been marked 'Do Not Swim'.  When Sam was through with him, had used him up, his voice creaked but he tried again. "I'm- ...."

"You shouldn’t have to be. I should- ..." Sam closed his mouth and shook his heavy head. "Go to sleep, Dean."

Eventually, Dean really asked, not in as many words as the question that had triggered all this, but he couldn't keep himself from seeing this all the way through.

"Sam?"  The word was whisper-soft between his lips and the wet head of Sam's cock. It wasn't really awkward anymore, his prayers offered at a proper whore's altar.

Sam groaned, but painted a gentle circle on Dean's cheek with his thumb.  "Just- … Make me come, alright?  Make me feel good.   Can you- …"  Something cracked through his body and his voice, electric and defiant as his fingers clenched toward pain, toward control, in Dean's steadily lengthening hair.  "Just do your fucking job, whore."

It wasn't shouted so much as pressed out, uneven and low, between tight-clenched teeth, bIt it was enough and Dean choked on it, repeatedly, shoved down and held down and fucked-into until his vision grayed and blurred, something salty and hot burning down his abraded throat.   It didn't get better after that, but at least Dean began to understand – a feat more frightening, more maddening, and more hopeful than he knew how to manage alongside everything else.  Still, he told himself that he'd try, that for Sam he would _try_.

Sam was leaning on _him_ now.


End file.
